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Hopeless?

Question Submitted: I’ve been married for nearly 15 years. I have no biological children and desire so much to be pregnant and to have children. I am resistant to just giving up but also feel like a fool for hoping otherwise. My friends don’t understand, they just keep hoping for me. Am I just supposed to be barren? I am sadly and regretfully uncontent at this point. We are pursuing foster care and open to adoption but I want more. I want to hold that precious life to my breast after carrying it in my womb! I just ache and am hopeless!

He knows exactly what you’re going through. The Creator of the universe, the Triune God, knows and He hears your cries. He shows you this in His Holy Word, through the story of His servant, Job, who lived thousands of years before you. “Where then is my hope?!” Job called out, and God heard his hopelessness (Job 17:14). God sees your friends and the lack of support they seem to be giving you, just as He saw Job’s friends and heard his plea to them: “Have mercy on me, have mercy on me, O you my friends, for the hand of God has touched me!” (Job 19:21).

“Though He slay me…” Job started to tell his friends, admitting again that God is in control of his life (Job 13:15), “Though He slay me, I will hope in Him.” Job knows he has no choice. It is God alone who can rescue him from his hopelessness. And what is it that Job realizes he should be hoping for? Does he hope for healing from his physical suffering? A restoration of his wealth? More children to comfort the loss of his family members? Yes, I’m sure he does, but these hopes are not what are revealed to us. The words we do have from him are universal. They apply to not just Job, but to you as well. And to me. This is one of God’s great gifts to us, these words that were written so very long ago, with us in mind:

“For I know that my Redeemer lives, and at the last He will stand upon the earth. And after my skin has been thus destroyed, yet in my flesh I shall see God, whom I shall see for myself, and my eyes shall behold, and not another” (Job 19:25-27).

The breasts that long to nurse, the womb that longs to carry–these are part of the “skin” that will eventually be “destroyed”. These maternal experiences, precious though I’m sure they are, pass away quickly. It is so easy to dream them into more than they are, to put our hope in being able to make them our own instead of hoping in the One who has made us His own, and “is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think” (Eph. 3:20). Yes, Christ did more, and still does more, than we could ever ask for, when He suffered and rose on our behalf to save our souls from being destroyed as well. And our bodies, thanks to this great Atonement, will be recreated and no longer broken as they are now.

King David was yet another biblical figure who wrote about hope. He knew what it was like to lose a child and, like you probably have done, asked the question, “And now, O Lord, for what do I wait?” (Ps. 39:7). But by the power of the Holy Spirit he was able to immediately answer his own question: “My hope is in You.” He, too, worshiped the same Redeemer as Job and looked not so much to earthly deliverance from tragedy, but to his Savior for all eternity. His book of Psalms records the many things in which he placed his hope: God’s Word (Ps. 119:74), the Lord’s salvation (Ps. 119.166), the Lord’s steadfast love (Ps. 147:11). These do not pass away. Menopause or hysterectomies don’t remove them. They remain forever, for you.

And if you feel that it is time to let go of the hope of pregnancy, fear not. There are many hopes left to be had.

“No eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man imagined, what God has prepared for those who love him” (1 Cor. 2:9).